A Series of Simultaneously Serious and Silly Inquiries

Imagine my shock and awe when I saw this quote in a bloomberg.com article this morning:

““To our knowledge, the next plan of the Tibet independence forces is to organize suicide squads to launch violent attacks” around the time of the Olympics, Wu Heping, the Public Security Ministry spokesman, told reporters today in Beijing. He declined to say what measures police are taking to prevent such assaults.” (check out the whole story here. It’s also all over the AP.)

I mean, are we taking this seriously? This, coming from a government who has such a tight control on the press surrounding the Tibetan protests that, after shutting down the country to foreign visitors entirely, it only allowed a relatively small handful of foreign journalists – not including the New York Times – to come and “witness” the “atrocities” that the Tibetans are perpetrating on the Chinese army? Buddhism is the only religion in the world that has not been the source or reason for war or violence. And now the Chinese government is trying to tell us all that monks are jumping on the Jihadist bomber wagon?

Then it hit me – it’s April Fools! Ha-ha, Chinese government! I get it, the jokes on me. Boy, did I suddenly feel like I had egg on my face.

I mean, no way everybody’s gonna treat this like real news. It’s April Fools Day… right?